


Metal, Stone, Heart

by Trobadora



Category: L'Oréal "Time Engraver" Commercials, 沉默的真相 | The Long Night (TV)
Genre: 2019 Commercial, 2020 Commercial, Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations, Canonical Character Death (Temporary), Crossover, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Reincarnation, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28135728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: "What am I supposed to do with you?" the Time Engraver asks, and hates the way his throat is closing up. He snatches up his burin, moves to apply it - the only thing he can do. The only thing he's good for, to keep time moving, to keep life in flow.This is his purpose. Time cannot stop.
Relationships: Time Engraver/Jiang Yang
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Metal, Stone, Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cyberbrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyberbrain/gifts).



> You asked: "I wonder, how does the Time Engraver feel about the people he ages? How does he feel when they die?", and I thought: Jiang Yang! - Unfortunately I misread and didn't realise you had DNWed character death until after the deadline had passed. I hope you will enjoy this anyway, since it's very much a fix-it, but if not, I completely understand. Luckily I had already written you a treat as well, which can now serve as a main gift. I'm very sorry for the mix-up!
> 
> Thank you to Sakana for brainstorming and beta-reading, and to Foxghost for help with naming the Time Engraver.

* * *

锲而舍之，朽木不折； 锲而不舍，金石可镂。  
"Carve but give up halfway, even a decayed piece of wood will not break;  
carve without stop, even metal and stone can be engraved."

* * *

"You again?" The Time Engraver sighs. 

He looks at the young man before him, at his pale drawn face, the lines of tension that have long since settled into his body, his downcast wounded eyes. This one's been returning to the Time Engraver's workshop with disturbing frequency, and it's only been getting worse.

The Time Engraver's fingers move towards his tools, then pause. 

He shouldn't, but ...

If it were the usual self-destructive behaviour or the results of illness, of war, of abuse, it would hardly be remarkable, even at this speed: those, the Time Engraver knows too well. He can sympathise, but he knows his duty. This, though? This is something else. 

This man could have stopped.

The Time Engraver's patience snaps. His fingers snap.

The man opens his eyes wide, stares. The next moment the Time Engraver has him by the lapels, demanding, "Why won't you stop?"

* * *

Jiang Yang's chest is too tight. His head is swimming.

He's staring at the judge, hearing his sentence: four years.

 _Four years,_ for bribes he didn't take, for evidence planted in his rooms, for fake witnesses from the luxury club where he never was a customer, for misleading pictures and the slander of his reputation that he hadn't been able to refute. All for the sake of the investigation he wouldn't quit - for the cover-up he wasn't willing to let slide.

He'd thought they wouldn't target a procurator directly, that his position would protect him. That he had an entire institution at his back, shielding him. He'd been wrong.

He'd known for three years now that his classmate Hou Guiping never committed either rape or suicide, that he was framed for both. He'd been trying to prove it since. And yet he hadn't seen this coming. 

Framed: just like Hou Guiping. He should have expected this. He'd been too naïve. They all had.

Then, suddenly: one moment he's standing in the courtroom, the walls closing in on him like iron bands around his chest, suffocating him. The next, he's in a bright place, a man in white descending on him in fury like some otherworldly messenger delivering judgment, yanking him forward by the lapels: "Why won't you stop?"

Is he dreaming? He can't be. Has he been drugged? Are they trying to frame him for drugs, as well? But he's already beaten. He's going to prison - he's thoroughly disgraced. Why would they bother?

His vision swims, the man's face before him blurring. 

No. He's losing it, isn't he? 

Jiang Yang's lips tremble. He lets out a helpless sound, half laugh half sob. "Isn't it enough? Hasn't it been enough?" But it never is, is it? Nothing he does. If he's losing even his own mind, what then is left?

The man lets go, takes a step back. Lifts his hand as if to snap his fingers, then shakes his head. "That's what I'm asking you," he says, somewhat sharply. His voice is deeper, more resonant, than his face suggests. "Look at yourself." He points to a large mirror in a wooden frame that's leaning against the otherwise bare wall. "Every line and shadow on your face tells its story. I've carved so many for you, and you won't stop."

The man is beautiful, his otherwise short black hair hanging into his forehead, accentuating eyes and cheekbones. He's wearing a white button-down shirt, half unbuttoned, over a white t-shirt. Hasn't Jiang Yang seen him before? 

_Just a déjà vu_ , he tells himself. _It's normal. These things happen._ (They don't. Not like this.)

The space around them is airy and bright, all white walls and huge windows. To Jiang Yang, who's seen nothing but detention and a courtroom lately, it's like something out of another world.

All of this looks as if - as if -

He looks up, helplessly, at the domed ceiling above. No, not a ceiling: there's a spiral staircase right above him, leading into nowhere. It starts right beside him - but it doesn't, does it? He'd have seen the lower part of it, right here in arm's reach.

He blinks, and the staircase is gone, only white-washed plaster and wooden struts above him.

Even his hallucinations won't stay solid. Jiang Yang bends his head, eyes clenched tight, shudders running through his body. "I can't breathe," wrings itself from his throat.

He's lost. In every sense of the word.

A hand touches his upper arm, and he flinches away, glancing up just to see the stranger snatching his hand back, looking startled himself. The man runs his hand through his hair in a startlingly ordinary gesture. "I should have practiced," he says, inexplicably, and then, very carefully, "Nothing bad will happen to you here."

From the mouth of a hallucination, that's not exactly reassuring. But all right. If his mind is breaking, might as well go with it. Why _not_ speak to him? 

"What is all this?" Jiang Yang asks, feeling more than a bit hysterical. "Who are you? What are you doing to me?"

"You're doing it to yourself." The man's lips quirk downwards. "I'm just a scrivener - I only record your life with what I carve. At your age, it could have been laugh lines instead. Wrinkles always come, but you're only thirty. You're young."

"You carve - what?" He can't even keep up with his own broken mind's fantasy.

The man reaches out, takes Jiang Yang's hand, lifts it between them. Jiang Yang is so confused, he doesn't resist. The man's touch feels real - solid and certain, warm.

"Hold still." 

Then there's a sharp-tipped tool running over the back of Jiang Yang's hand, not quite touching the skin. There's a glitter of light - special effects - and then - is that -

The skin on the back of his hand looks drier, like winter, like it might crack. Jiang Yang blinks several times. It stays the same way. "What did you do?" 

The man is still holding his hand, not letting go. Jiang Yang, belatedly, pulls it away.

"This is who I am," says the man. "I engrave the traces of time into your skin. Every experience, every emotion - I'll faithfully record them for you." He spreads a hand, sweeps it in a wide gesture. "This is my workroom. I don't normally wake people up when I work on them." He ducks his head, as if embarrassed.

"All right," Jiang Yang says, helplessly. He looks around. Besides the wide, arched window at the far end of the room, showing a bright blue sky, there's another window behind him. The face of a clock - this must be a clocktower. The large circle of metal struts and glass looks out over a vista of rooftops.

Not the roofs of any city Jiang Yang knows: there's a high wrought-iron lattice tower in the distance, the kind he's seen in pictures, in film, but not in real life.

All right. It doesn't have to make sense; it's a hallucination. He walks closer to the clock face nonetheless, drawn by the view. "Master Time Engraver," he tries, constructing a title out of the man's bizarre self-description. He feels quixotic and strange, like he's floating. Like a dream. "Do you have a name?"

No answer comes. He turns around. The man is staring at him, looking startled. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. "Yes," says the Time Engraver, eventually. "They call me Tongqie, when they call me anything."

And what on Earth - or not - is that supposed to mean?

Also, _qiè_ as in 锲, cut or engrave? A name and a description both, as if he is only what he does.

"All right," Jiang Yang murmurs to himself, and turns back to the view from the clock face. Four years of prison - no, no, he won't accept that; he can still file an appeal. But prison nonetheless. He is (was) a procurator; he knows the law. He won't escape it, doesn't have the evidence to exonerate himself. This is likely his last chance in a long time to see such a view. Who cares if it's not real?

His eyes are wet. He wipes them, and keeps watching the sunlit roofs.

After a while - a moment, an eternity? - there's the sound of fingers snapping. In the blink of an eye, the view is replaced by a familiar courtroom. The judge has finished speaking, but is still looking at Jiang Yang. 

Jiang Yang's hands are trembling. He clenches his fingers. This is what's real. He can't escape reality, though his mind seems to try. He needs to focus.

In his head, he repeats what has been his mantra for four years now, through every setback, every loss of evidence, every failure: _I don't believe I can be defeated. I don't believe there's no way justice can prevail._

It rings hollow today. But even if he's just going through the motions, he can't give up now.

* * *

The first time the Time Engraver notices Jiang Yang, it's nothing out of the ordinary. Tongqie would have forgotten, were it not for what comes after.

The young man snapped into his workshop on that day has raindrops on his skin. He's frozen in the moment of dancing, one arm high in the air, grinning wide, a letter held in his hand. Tongqie runs his burin over the corners of his eyes. The first slight crinkles on this face are those of laughter, still soft enough that they will smooth out fully when his facial muscles relax.

From this angle, the Time Engraver can see the letter: it's a job offer. This young man is fresh-faced and joyful about his new job. He's in his late twenties and doesn't seem too careless; he won't appear in this workshop again for some time.

Tongqie thinks, _Laugh lines will suit you, when they grow._

* * *

The dancing man's time comes again within the year, much sooner than expected, and the lines that are furrowing into his face speak of nothing pleasant. The Time Engraver eyes Jiang Yang - that is the man's name; he knows it the way he knows the lines on all his subjects' bodies, the ones already carved and the ones about to be engraved - and shakes his head in exasperation.

"What made you so grim?" he asks. "Why don't you try a laugh?"

He mimes a grin for Jiang Yang to emulate, but of course Jiang Yang is frozen in time, not awake to see.

The Time Engraver sets down his burin, turns to the clock face. Its steel frame reflects the light as he reaches out and twists his hand to rewind the clock and the timeline, so he can see: a studious young man working hard in his office. It's late at night.

"Ever heard of taking a break?" Tongqie mutters.

The window shatters. Jiang Yang, expression tight and angry, runs outside to an empty street. His phone rings; a voice threatens, "Keep investigating if you want to die."

What has this young man got himself into? 

The Time Engraver shakes his head. These things are the business of the living, not his. He has work to do. With a snap of the fingers he returns Jiang Yang back into the street; with another he summons his next subject.

The man hovering above the marble slab before him is short and grey-haired, sitting in the air, suspended with a piece of pork between his chopsticks just in front of his open mouth. His eyes are glassy; his face is flushed. He's been drinking, and not just with his dinner. Tongqie runs his burin over the shadows under his eyes.

"Take better care of yourself," he snaps, carving a line with perhaps unnecessary force. Some people don't appreciate what they have.

Tongqie does find Jiang Yang laughing again, later. It's the determined cheer of a man trying to keep fear and frustration at bay.

* * *

To the Time Engraver, humans come in two kinds: the ones who age fast by adverse circumstance, stress imposed on them by an uncaring world, and the ones who age fast by their own carelessness, who frivolously spend the moments others would give anything to have. He speaks to them - scolds them, scoffs at them, reminds them it's not he who's their enemy; it's their own life story he engraves - but only while they're in stasis in his workshop. He never wakes them up: for the former he has no comfort; for the latter he has no patience. 

A woman who keeps pulling all-nighters, trying to make ends meet. Another who does the same for the sake of partying with her friends.

A middle-aged man whose two packs a day have left his face sallow, his lungs damaged, the lines in his face deeper than they need to be. Another who's been poisoned in an industrial accident.

A sick child, the lines on her young face engraved by pain. An old man whose face is wrinkles all over, evidence of a long life well lived.

He has his own opinion about every case. Fairly or unfairly, he judges. It makes no difference, in the end.

Laugh lines, stress lines, pain lines, age lines. Time keeps moving forward, and he faithfully records it all, carving its invisible progression into physical being. 

If he stopped - if he chose, if he refused to engrave life's story as it was told - then time itself would stop. There would be no life without it, only a deathly stasis: there would be nothing at all.

The Time Engraver does his duty and keeps his distance, doing his best not to care too much.

* * *

Time erodes stone and fades flowers, grinds metal and human life to dust; time can also smooth sharp edges and mend broken bone or skin. Time also heals.

The young woman in the Time Engraver's workshop today has lines on her face carved by sorrow. The last time he saw her, the skin around her eyes was swollen with tears. Today when he puts his burin to her temples, her brow, around her mouth, the lines he gave her before are softened, retreating. He grins at her. "Keep at it - you're doing something right!" 

But when he rewinds time, he finds the break-up she is healing from: it's Jiang Yang again. It's a year since he was young and dancing and happy, and a deep tension has tightened every line in his body. He visibly holds himself straight by nothing but force of will as he walks slowly away from Wu Aike. He speeds up. He begins to run.

He can't outrun time, or his own grief.

Tongqie can't help but look further, discover the cause of both their grief. It's Jiang Yang's investigation grinding him down, and he won't stop. It's Jiang Yang distancing himself from Wu Aike, trying to spare her at her father's request.

She doesn't protest, not out loud. Doesn't ask him to stay. And she hurt when he left her, but she's leaving him behind now. 

When he snaps her back into her timeline, bent over a desk, preparing for an exam, Tongqie is no longer sure if she's doing the right thing.

* * *

Again: Jiang Yang nearly dies when the brakes of his car are sabotaged.

Again: a suspect has to be let go under pressure from a corrupt official; a witness disappears. A summons for questioning, too soon, with too little evidence, gets the investigators in trouble. ("What were you thinking?" mutters the Time Engraver.)

Again: a partial confession is retracted, and Jiang Yang's police captain friend is framed for having extorted it under torture, sent away for three years. 

Again: the loss of an ally when Jiang Yang's mentor asks him to no longer involve his fiancée.

Again: the last clue, a receipt from a photo studio, comes to nothing when the photo studio burns down. The owner dies.

Within months, it piles up. Within months, it grinds Jiang Yang down, in fast-forward. Within months, the Time Engraver's frustration grows.

Every setback, every loss, every threat or death or disappearance carves new lines into Jiang Yang's body, screws more tightly the tension that has hold of him, weighs him down more. Still less than a year has passed since Jiang Yang began his investigation. It's not illness and it's not age, but it's the strain of time nonetheless: his failure to prove his case is weighing on Jiang Yang, and he is not setting down that burden. 

It should not affect the Time Engraver. But no matter how many times he is asked, or begged, or threatened - Jiang Yang does not stop, as if his will could grind down even time itself.

It can't.

* * *

Jiang Yang is not tough or stoic. He's all too vulnerable. Within the space of a year, there grows a tension that never leaves, that settles in. One year carves lines of strain into him; the next digs them deeper. Tongqie is only making it all visible, the story of a life told in the medium of human skin.

The year after isn't better, and still Jiang Yang doesn't stop. Why?

Jiang Yang could end his investigation, turn away, be comfortable in his life. He doesn't, and it costs him.

"Don't keep doing this to yourself," the Time Engraver begs.

Time cannot stop, but Jiang Yang can.

* * *

The hotpot bubbles on the table between them. Chen Mingzhang grins at Jiang Yang across its steam, and Zhu Wei - finally back in Pingkang County - lifts a glass to him. 

Jiang Yang smiles. They eat, and drink, and bring Zhu Wei up to speed on their lives - Chen Mingzhang's retirement from his position as a forensic doctor; Jiang Yang's marriage and fatherhood - and drink more, until Lao-Chen is passed out on the table and Lao-Zhu's gestures have become sweeping and emphatic.

It's really very good. 

Then Lao-Zhu asks after the case, and Jiang Yang crumbles.

There's no evidence. There's nothing to go on. It all spills from his mouth. He can't - he doesn't know what to do. His breathing turns ragged. His chopsticks clatter onto the table. His mouth works. He tries to smile, and can't. "All gone!" 

He wipes at his face. Downs another drink. Lao-Zhu tries to tell him it's all right, but all he can do is bend his head, press his forehead against the back of his hand, hide his face and clench his eyes tight to try and force back the tears.

He has to wipe them on his sleeve, in the end.

When Jiang Yang looks up again, for a moment, the blink of an eye, his blurry eyes see not the hotpot table and his friends, but white walls and a man in white looking at him with intent focus. The next second the steam from the bubbling red broth wafts into his face, and the image is gone.

What was that? A flash of memory? He can't recall.

Lao-Zhu asks after his son, and he's grateful for the distraction.

* * *

The Time Engraver is starting to develop furrows between his own eyebrows. He looks at Jiang Yang, once again suspended in the air, ready to be worked upon. Jiang Yang's eyes are wet. He looks drawn and broken.

"I shouldn't," Tongqie tells himself. He rewinds time nonetheless to discover what's happened now.

Nothing new, it turns out: merely the accumulated burdens of the last three years. One moment Jiang Yang is laughing and joking with his friends; the next the false cheer falls away, and he's shaking with emotion. Tongqie stares at his mouth. Jiang Yang's lips are working, trembling, drawing back as he fights back tears. Jiang Yang buries his face in his hand, in his sleeve.

Jiang Yang has friends - close ones; true ones. Tongqie can't see the threads that bind people together - that is not his métier - but he knows they are there. The fabric of the human world is woven of such things. But friends can't ward off Jiang Yang's decline.

It's been three years - two in which his investigation went nowhere at all - and Jiang Yang can't let it go. Won't, despite the way it eats at him, shadows his soul. He's getting nowhere. Why won't he stop? Set it aside, at least?

Why does he insist on carrying this burden?

Tongqie turns back to the present, Jiang Yang here in his workshop with his wounded eyes, his hunched posture, the heaviness he never quite loses even while laughing. Tongqie wants nothing so much as to snap him awake, grab him by his blue-striped shirt and _shake_ him.

Until he stops? Until he explains, starts making sense? Until he agrees to be happy? Tongqie doesn't quite know.

Impulsively, he snaps his fingers. Jiang Yang's eyes stare at him. _No._ He snaps his fingers again, and Jiang Yang is frozen in time once more.

He can't do this. What was he thinking?

Tongqie shakes his head, finishes his job as fast as he can.

"New lines again, what a surprise. Crying's not good for the skin either, you know." His heart isn't in the scolding today; the words feel empty.

The Time Engraver buries himself in work: in laugh lines, in drawn hung over faces, in injury and sickness, in old age. Things he understands.

* * *

The second time Jiang Yang meets the Time Engraver, he is exhausted and trying to fall asleep. He needs to sleep while he can - prison life is hard. Jiang Yang tries to be quiet, suppress his cough. He can't seem to shake it. 

It's all right, he tells himself. He can do this. It will be all right.

Suddenly it's bright around him, and his eyes snap open -

It's not the lights; it's the bright white space again, sunlight streaming through a window even though it should be around midnight. He coughs, arms curling around his chest, then sits up on the white marble slab he was lying on.

The man from before - Tongqie - is looking at him, arms crossed over his chest. His mouth is a thin, disapproving line. 

Jiang Yang sets his feet down onto the actual floor, stares down at the white-and-blue mosaic tiles in their classic octagon-and-dot pattern, then up at the man before him. "Is this real?"

Tongqie scoffs. "We talked about this. I told you who I am."

Jiang Yang ducks his head. "I thought my mind was producing very strange metaphors," he says, and looks around - white walls, white busts and statues, white columns; a wooden screen; a stool; empty picture frames. It's strange and empty, but it feels real.

"Time isn't a metaphor," says Tongqie. But a corner of his lips quirks upwards. He looks even more beautiful when he smiles.

Nothing in the last half-year, prison and all, has given Jiang Yang reason to doubt his mind. Surely hallucinations don't just randomly manifest for a moment, months apart. Surely hallucinations aren't this consistent.

 _Believe the evidence, Jiang Yang. Make your own judgment._

If Jiang Yang can't believe his own eyes, his own mind any more, then what about Hou Guiping's case? He must believe in himself.

"All right." He carefully gets to his feet, looks at Tongqie, tries to evaluate him as a person, not a hallucination. It's easy - he looks real. His long-sleeved shirt is, for some reason, unbuttoned half-way down his chest, showing the t-shirt underneath. His cuffs, too, are unbuttoned. Expressive eyes and high cheekbones dominate a face that looks made for beauty adverts. The way he's focused on Jiang Yang is disconcerting in its intensity. What does he want? "You keep bringing me here. Why?"

Tongqie snorts. "I keep bringing everyone here. I just don't wake them when I do."

An evasion. Jiang Yang finds himself smiling. Even mystic entities such as this, it seems, are all too human in some ways. But the truth is, this is the part that least makes sense. If there's such a thing as a Time Engraver - why would he take an interest in Jiang Yang of all people? "Why me?"

"You didn't stop. I want to know why." Tongqie makes a face, as if he knows how ridiculous a statement that is.

"Why should I stop?" Jiang Yang shivers. He didn't mean to be so bristly. And yet ... "Everyone wants me to, even you. Why should I do what they say?"

"I don't want that." The answer comes too quickly, and Tongqie holds up a hand, as if trying to snatch it back. "That is - of course I do. You should. It would be better for you. Time would be less harsh on you."

Jiang Yang rubs his hands over his forearms, feeling cold. A yawn escapes his mouth before he can try to suppress it. "Time? You, you mean."

The Time Engraver shakes his head. His eyes ... is that regret in his eyes? "I only engrave what you live. The living is up to you."

What an existence. Unexpectedly, Jiang Yang almost feels pity for this man. "And you? Do you live?"

He gets no answer; Tongqie averts his eyes.

Jiang Yang stands there, feeling woozy. Weariness is seeping into him, fogging the edges of his thoughts.

"I'm tired," he says after a moment. "Can I sleep?"

Tongqie startles. As if such a thought didn't occur to him, that a person snatched in the middle of the night might be tired. "Of course. Lie back down." His lips press together briefly. "I'll see about taking you in the day, next time."

There will be a next time, then. Of course there will be, if the Time Engraver truly is what he says. And he clearly means to wake Jiang Yang again. 

_Good_ , Jiang Yang finds himself thinking. He has little else to look forward to, in the next year and a half.

He lies back down. The slab of marble doesn't make for a comfortable bed, but even so, he's asleep before he can tell he's been returned to the world.

* * *

It's strange to have company. The Time Engraver has never had any before.

Jiang Yang is quiet, subdued. He moves carefully, these days. His smiles are hesitant. He still hasn't shaken his cough.

He's slightly taller than Tongqie, but he looks small, all the same. He is a young man still, at thirty-two, not old enough to be declining, but what has been weighing him down is only weighing heavier. And if Tongqie is any judge - which he is, as soon as any illness begins to leave external traces - there is something else now, too. That cough, rooted deep in his lungs.

Of course there is. Neither time nor life are, after all, fair.

Jiang Yang's hair has been shorn short, and today, he has a bruise on his cheek. It makes Tongqie angry. It shouldn't.

"I lied," Jiang Yang says, that day. "I pled guilty. But I'm not." As if he needs to remind himself. 

"I know," says Tongqie. He doesn't know what else to say, and Jiang Yang doesn't demand words of him. He seems content to sit on a stool, quietly, watching as the Time Engraver does his work.

Today he has his arms wrapped around himself. Is he cold? It's not cold in this space out of time, can't be. There's no true temperature without the temporal, after all, and time doesn't pass here. Jiang Yang can't grow tired in this place, not any more than he already is, and he'll return to the timestream exactly as he was. It doesn't matter how long he stays.

But Jiang Yang is not well.

Tongqie looks around. This space is too empty. It's not meant for a human's comfort. But there's the golden fabric covering one of the statues. Tongqie pulls it down, holds it out to Jiang Yang.

Jiang Yang stares at him, as if he doesn't understand. Tongqie, irritated, steps closer, wraps the cloth around Jiang Yang's shoulders. Jiang Yang holds perfectly still, eyes wide and startled; then, heartbreakingly, they grow wet.

Tongqie turns away. What is he doing? "Enough," he says, and summons his next subject.

* * *

"You don't get bored?" Jiang Yang asks, watching the Time Engraver work.

Tongqie turns around, stares. He wants to say, _No one has asked me this before_ , but then, who could have? The humans he doesn't speak to, merely talks at? His own kind, who live the same non-lives, weaving or shaping clay or any of the other crafts of fate? They are solitary beings, singular each.

But the question touches something in him. Not that he's bored - he isn't; it's not in his make-up, he thinks - but that Jiang Yang would think to ask, to care.

It's not something he ever knew he could want, and there it is, given to him.

He doesn't know how to express it, so instead he only says, "It's who I am," as if that was a response.

* * *

"I wonder if Zhu Wei is still investigating," Jiang Yang says one day, watching the lights of the city outside through the arched window at the end of the hall. The moon is bright in the sky.

"Why?" Tongqie demands, throwing his hands in the air. "Why won't you let it go?"

Jiang Yang's shoulders hunch. Tongqie hates it. He snaps his fingers, freezing Jiang Yang. 

"What am I supposed to do with you?" he asks, and hates the way his throat is closing up. He snatches up his burin, moves to apply it - the only thing he can do. The only thing he's good for, to keep time moving, to keep life in flow.

This is his purpose. If he could stop -

He throws his burin across the room, watches it bounce off a bust. Turns towards the stack of picture frames leaning against the wall and picks one up. They are all empty; it doesn't matter which. Holding one up before Jiang Yang is all it takes to capture his image. Then he leans it back against the wall. 

But it's wrong. Why capture this moment, rather than what came before? Tongqie runs his hand through his hair, pulls on his bangs, then reaches out. Turns his hand counter-clockwise, until the image in the frame has rewound to a happier one.

A smile, at least. Not a carefree one - that would feel like cheating - but a smile. That will do.

And then, after all, because life must live and time must proceed, he snaps Jiang Yang back into the present.

* * *

The next year is quiet. Jiang Yang is quiet. They don't speak much, but Tongqie wakes Jiang Yang up every time, nonetheless.

Jiang Yang sits and watches, listens. Asks quiet questions, expresses sympathy or respect or scorn for the Time Engraver's subjects. Sometimes, in between, they sit together, or watch the view from the clock face or a window. Tongqie has never done such a thing before, has never contemplated it. It's surprisingly nice.

"I miss Lao-Chen and Lao-Zhu," Jiang Yang says, sitting next to Tongqie on the marble slab, looking at his hands. "I miss my wife. I miss my son." His voice breaks on the last word, and he turns his face to the side, away from Tongqie. He clears his throat. His lungs stutter through a cough, heaving for breath. The next words are hoarse. "He's four years old today."

Tongqie has never been called on to comfort a person before. He only knows how to scold, but he doesn't want to scold Jiang Yang. Not any more. Hesitantly he lifts his left arm, puts it on Jiang Yang's shoulders. There are minuscule shivers going through Jiang Yang's body; he can feel them, like this.

After a moment, Jiang Yang slumps against Tongqie's side, turning his face into Tongqie's shoulder.

Tongqie holds him. He's never held anyone before. Is this how he's supposed to feel?

* * *

What Jiang Yang misses most about his wife is how steady she is. Hongxia was always solid at his side, at his back. He was right to divorce her, to get her and little Xiaoshu out of the line of fire. But he misses them both terribly.

Hongxia was restful.

But then, in his own way, so is this. So is Tongqie.

The architecture of this place is strange. Sometimes when he looks up there's a domed ceiling, whitewashed as unevenly as the walls. Sometimes there's a staircase leading up into nowhere. The large domed window is sometimes at the other end of the room, sometimes in a different one. Sometimes there are pictures in the frames; sometimes there are not. The only thing that remains solid is the clock face - that, and the white walls and the tiled floor. 

Even the floor is not steady under Jiang Yang's feet: sometimes there's a white marble slab beneath him when he arrives, sitting on top of the tiles. Sometimes there is not.

But however fluctuating the layout, Tongqie is always there. Steady. Offering respite.

* * *

"Tongqie," Jiang Yang says one day. pensive."锲, qiè, for engraving, and for 锲而不舍, _qiè ér bù shě_ , keep chipping away."

Tongqie turns towards him, unsure what he's trying to say.

"You are what you do," Jiang Yang continues, a small, almost dreamy smile on his face. It's good to see. "That's what your name says, isn't it? But it's not true."

The Time Engraver stares. Of course it's true. But before he can protest, Jiang Yang is speaking again. "Thank you," he says, very quietly, "for giving me this. These moments out of time, where I can breathe. Where I can rest. I can never repay you."

"I need no repayment," Tongqie tells him, baffled. He woke Jiang Yang only to satisfy his own curiosity, unanswered though it has remained. It was not a gift. And breathe? His cough is only getting worse. "I didn't - I only wanted to understand."

"I know." 

Jiang Yang's smile is tremulous and devastating. Tongqie doesn't know what to do with it.

He stands and stares. The moment passes.

* * *

Released from prison, Jiang Yang grows out his hair again, grows a beard. It would suit him even better, were he not so downcast. It suits him well enough nonetheless.

He works hard. His old life is lost to him, but he builds a new one. "I can still work," he says, holding on to that truth. "I can still support myself." 

He speaks to his ex-wife again. She hugs him, and he smiles through tears. Tongqie is glad: he wants Jiang Yang to have everything. He has so little, but at least he has this: his son; his wife; his friends. Jiang Yang is not alone.

(It's a relief to Tongqie, too: it's not because he's alone that Jiang Yang turns to him. Out of prison, he still sits in his company, looking quietly glad to be there.)

Jiang Yang's cough has grown awful. Too often, he struggles to breathe. The Time Engraver can tell where this is going.

It never before pained the Time Engraver to use his tools, to engrave one more line into increasingly sallow skin. Others have been in worse condition, but he was apart from them. He doesn't have enough distance from this man, and every additional line carved into Jiang Yang's face makes him inexplicably angry, as if he had a right to such a feeling.

He doesn't tell Jiang Yang his time is running out. Whether that's a mercy or not, he can't say. But he can't bring himself to add one more burden to this man's already-bent back.

* * *

Though Jiang Yang's body is bowed and his spirit broken, his will has not faltered. That becomes clear the moment a chance presents itself to continue his investigation: he grabs it with both hands.

"A photo," he says, fingers curled tightly around the edge of a wooden screen in the Time Engraver's tower. "A victim list. He had it, all this time, and did nothing. But I will. We will."

And Tongqie's patience snaps. "Why? Hasn't it all cost you enough? Why won't you stop?" Jiang Yang flinches. Bows his head. No, no, that is not what Tongqie wanted. "I mean -" He breaks off, lost.

Jiang Yang's lips tremble, pull back as he struggles for control. Turns wounded eyes on Tongqie. "I can't," he says. "Don't you see? It will all have been for nothing, then."

"You could, though."

Confusion. Hurt. Anger. "You keep saying that. Why does it matter to you?"

Tongqie swallows against the lump in his throat. "Because you could," he manages finally, "and I can't."

They stare at each other. Jiang Yang's eyes are wide. "Time doesn't stop." It's a murmur, almost to himself. Then, to Tongqie, "But justice doesn't stop either. I don't believe it can be defeated. I don't believe that there are people who can be beyond it, who can evade it forever. I've almost given up so many times. You must know that. I almost didn't take on the case at all! But once I saw the truth of it, I couldn't stop. Where it ends, I don't know. It's been very dark, for so long. Even here," he gestures at the white wall, the sunlit window, "the shadow on my soul is too heavy. But they've not won yet, not if we're not giving up."

"I can't stop," Tongqie says, words tumbling out. "It's my duty, and my privilege, all of life spanning out before me as a progression, never stopping. Even I can't stop myself. And nothing can. _You_ could stop, but you won't, even though you can't gain enough ground to move forward at all." He shakes his head. "I should be glad I don't have a choice. I might not be worthy of it."

"I don't believe that," Jiang Yang says. Quiet. Certain. "Some things, we can't fail to do. Not and live with ourselves."

Reluctantly, Tongqie nods. It's duty, for both of them. One they value. For all their differences, there's that. Except that Jiang Yang has been obstructed at every turn, punished for his dedication. It makes Tongqie angry. 

He isn't meant to identify with humans, not like this. Feel for them, in the abstract, care - that's neither here nor there. But put himself in their place? Yet he can't help it. He feels ... he feels that he understands. 

He reaches out. Takes Jiang Yang's hand. Jiang Yang smiles at him. Tongqie feels very strange.

* * *

Tongqie has known for months that it won't last much longer. But even though carving new lines into Jiang Yang's face now makes his hands threaten to tremble, makes pressure build up behind his eyes, when Jiang Yang says, "You knew, didn't you?" it takes him by surprise all the same.

Jiang Yang is in a striped hospital gown, barefoot, and he doesn't stand up from the marble slab. He shivers.

Tongqie offers him the golden cloth he wrapped him in before. Jiang Yang drapes it around him. 

"I can't die yet," he says, his face crumpling. "I still have to - I have to -"

"I'm sorry," Tongqie says helplessly. "I can do nothing for you. I'm a scrivener, I don't make up the stories I engrave." Jiang Yang only looks at him with those hurt eyes. "There wasn't anything I could do!"

Wasn't there? If he'd said something - if he'd warned Jiang Yang - could Jiang Yang have been diagnosed early enough to recover? But he can't interfere. It's not his place; he's not meant for - for -

The Time Engraver shies away from the thought. He's seen enough of death; it shouldn't matter to him if it's sooner or later. 

And Jiang Yang takes his words at face value, doesn't ask for more. He never does. (It hurts. He should ask. He should be given ... everything.)

"You'll see me again in my next life," he says.

Yes. But Jiang Yang will no longer be the same man, then.

* * *

Jiang Yang fails again. 

It's all right. It's fine. Zhang Xiaoqian is right: she needs to live her own life, needs to protect herself. She's been through so much, and she's rebuilt her life - to ask her to testify, make herself a target, is too much.

It's really all right.

He keeps it together until he's in Tongqie's workshop again. His time is running out.

"It won't end here," he insists. His chest is burning. There's not enough air. "It won't! Someday - even if it's not me, someone will expose them. Someone will succeed."

Tongqie pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. He's so unused to such things, it's endearing. It makes Jiang Yang want to smile, despite everything.

"Is it worth it?" Tongqie asks, quietly. "Everything it's cost you?"

Was it worth it to Hou Guiping, trying so hard to protect those victimised women? It only led him to death and disgrace. Is it worth it to Jiang Yang, exposing the truth, bringing the men behind it all to justice? 

"I believe ..." Jiang Yang meets Tongqie's eyes. "If I won't die with regret, then that will be worth it." He smiles. "And I met you. I don't regret that."

"Maybe you should," Tongqie murmurs.

"Never." He swallows. He's never managed to articulate this, even to himself, but suddenly it seems very important that he try. There's not much time left. He has to. "You're kind," he tries.

Tongqie looks at him, baffled.

"Don't you see? If even time itself can be kind, the cosmos can't be such a cold place after all. You give me faith. There must be justice, somewhere." He looks down. Tries to think. "There must be something more I can do."

"You're ill," Tongqie says, sounding desperate. "You should focus on yourself."

But Jiang Yang can tell he doesn't entirely mean it. He wants Jiang Yang to be careful, but part of him is clearly pleased that he won't stop. Tongqie understands duty, even if they're coming at it from opposite sides. He wants him to stop, and he doesn't.

It makes him so real, this ambivalence, this uncertainty. A person, not a tool. "I'm ill," Jiang Yang says, conceding. "I know. But I can't go peacefully, not like this. Not if I can't -"

He stops. An idea forms itself in his mind. He smiles.

"Jiang Yang? What is it?

"If I'm dying," he says, "then I can only make sure to make my death count."

* * *

Jiang Yang has a plan.

Jiang Yang has a plan, and Tongqie can't help but be impressed, no matter how much he hates it.

Jiang Yang is dying, and he's proposing to use his death to stir up controversy. To make a suicide scandal, and then release the truth, for the world to make sense of.

Jiang Yang is determined, and one of his friends comes up one better: to make his death more than a scandal - make it seem murder, make it seem terrorism, truly draw all eyes.

When he tells Tongqie, he smiles. It's a terrible smile that's satisfied and pained, tearful and pleased, that tugs at Tongqie's heart. "Like this, I can still succeed. Like this, it won't be in vain. And I can die without regret."

Tongqie swallows. All lives end, and Jiang Yang's far too soon. But Jiang Yang isn't stopping. Even now, even beyond his own death, he isn't stopping. He's as relentless as time itself.

* * *

Almost.

Almost.

Too soon.

Tongqie runs his burin - a too-large one - over Jiang Yang's brow, one last time. And then, with the smallest one, at the corner of his mouth, a trace of that smile. These are the last lines Jiang Yang has earned.

"Don't bring me here again," Jiang Yang says, very quietly. "Everything's nearly in place. Only a few days left. If you have to, between now and then - don't wake me. I have to -" He swallows, heavily. Smiles - even now, he smiles. "I have to be focused."

Ill as he is, broken as he is, he still looks beautiful. She did good work on him, the Potter who shapes from clay the features of every human soul.

And all Tongqie can do is nod, and say "I promise," and swallow down his own, futile grief.

* * *

The Time Engraver looks around his workshop. Without Jiang Yang here, without the prospect of bringing him here, the space feels empty. White walls, white statues, blue-and-white tiles. Picture frames. A stool, a screen, a slab of marble. There is so little here, and every bit of it holds memories of Jiang Yang.

It has been seven years. Seven, against all the millennia of the Time Engraver's existence. But his heart - his heart aches. It will be harder, now, to see humans decline towards their deaths. It was easier, not knowing what it felt like when it mattered. But he can't regret it, not for a moment. Not at all.

Like Jiang Yang, he'll do his duty, hard or not. There is no life without it. He'll gladly pay the price for having known Jiang Yang.

And perhaps, if they're both lucky, in Jiang Yang's next life he'll be allowed to carve laugh lines into his face. Perhaps the wrinkles of old age, too. 

Jiang Yang won't remember Tongqie, but Tongqie hopes he'll he happy.

* * *

Time passes.

Time passes. The Time Engraver continues his work.

Time passes. More time. The Time Engraver tries out something new: leaves his tower, wandering the world in between his work, watching people from a different perspective. He only walks the world as it's frozen in time, but to compensate, he spends more time, too, rewinding his subjects' lives when he works on them. Watches their lives more.

Time passes, and the workshop changes. The clock on the tower changes.

Time passes. Until.

* * *

Tongqie sets down his latest acquisition: an antique early 17th century pocket watch. It was destroyed in a museum fire - or would have been, had he not taken it out of the time stream the moment before. It will have pride of place here.

He looks around, satisfied with his growing collection. Most of it is not so valuable as this piece - clocks and watches of different kinds, lamps, cabinets, a dartboard - symbols of time, and reminders of particular moments he has witnessed, all mixed up. He's thought about it hard, whether he should. But his duty to humanity is more than just to engrave their lives into their bodies; it's to witness them, and to remember.

He turns towards the octagonal pedestal in front of the clock face. The yellow glass of the great clock face's outer band warms the light streaming in, as do the old-fashioned lanterns inside. 

The Time Engraver snaps his fingers to summon his next subject. A young man in a casual loose tunic appears, smiling mischievously and pointing a finger. 

Tongqie's heart stops at the sight of familiar features. It's Jiang Yang. 

He steps closer, too hasty. Jiang Yang looks young, healthy, bright. Tongqie is arrested. He smiles at the well-groomed beard, at the lips curved into a smile, at the colourful shirt and the unruly hair, so different from the way it used to be. (Is it a difference in Jiang Yang, or merely different standards for what's acceptable in a respectable worker? He's not sure.) Tongqie's fingers tremble as he reaches out to brush their tips over Jiang Yang's cheek.

He snatches his hand back at the last moment. Jiang Yang won't remember him. Won't remember his last life. Tongqie's chest aches with old loss suddenly fresh and piercing again. 

All the time he's been wandering and watching - in retrospect, Tongqie realises he's been looking for a particular face. But now that he has found him, what can he do?

He could wake Jiang Yang, meet him again. And since to him, time is malleable, he could rewind it all for his viewing, restore it to Jiang Yang that way. 

But given how harsh that life was on him, isn't it better that he can't recall? He is happy. Seems happy, at least.

Tongqie turns to the clock face, twists his hand, looks. It's his right and his duty to witness, but it feels intrusive, all the same, to learn Jiang Yang anew like this, without speaking to him.

He does find Jiang Yang happy. He also finds Zhu Wei and Chen Mingzhang - of course, he thinks; their souls were woven together in that last life; of course they found each other again. How could they not?

He swallows. His eyes are stinging. 

It's good, this. It's how it's meant to be.

Taking a deep breath, the Time Engraver takes up his burin, gives Jiang Yang - again - the first gentle crinkles around his eyes. This time, he hopes, the future will be brighter for him. He'll watch over him, even if that's all he can do.

He lifts his hand to snap his fingers, return Jiang Yang to his new life -

\- and suddenly he finds himself in a weaving workshop. He's never seen it from the inside before, but he knows it immediately. How could he not?

"Madam Weaver," he says, turning to look around the place. "What are you doing?"

And then he stops, staring, because it's not just her. She is there, of course, standing up from her loom, wearing a jeans overall over a red t-shirt, her shoulder-length hair pulled back into a grey-streaked ponytail. But next to Tongqie, there's someone else: Jiang Yang, still frozen in time. 

"You know what it is I do," she says brightly, stepping up to him, reaching for his chest. "I weave the threads of individual lives together into the fabric of relationships."

"I don't have such things," says Tongqie, staring down blankly at the bright red-gold thread unspooling from his own chest at her hand.

"You have now," Madam Weaver says testily. She reaches for Jiang Yang next, draws a similar thread from his heart, pulls them both to her loom, where she sits.

The Time Engraver has not carved the lines on her body; why should she weave the thread of his life?

"This isn't how it works," he says, inanely. He knows that people's fates bind themselves together in such ways - he can't see the threads that bind them, but knows they are there. He never thought about such things applying to him. He has no fate; he simply is.

"Tongqie," she says. "That is your personal name, isn't it?" He nods, and she continues, "It's your own doing. You know it is. The threads I weave together only express what people weave between them."

"We are not people."

"Are we not?"

It sounds like something Jiang Yang might say. "Why now?" 

"I only weave what people live," she repeats, emphatic. "If I had to guess why - it's choices, most of the time. You could have let it go."

He'd tried. He'd meant to. But it's clear that's not what she means. And as for what she does mean - Tongqie has no answer to that.

He watches her weave, says nothing as she does her work, can only stare blankly at the thread of his life - their lives - until she dismisses them, and he finds them both returned to his own workshop.

Is such a thing truly possible?

Tongqie swallows heavily. Snaps his fingers. 

Jiang Yang comes to life. His eyes dart around the room, confused. Then they settle on Tongqie, and he breaks into a grin. "It's you!" Tilts his head, scratches his temple. His grin only grows wider. "It's actually you!"

Tongqie stares. "You ... remember?"

It's not impossible for a human to remember a past life, but it's vanishingly rare.

"Dreams," Jiang Yang says. He's still beaming at Tongqie. "By the time I was sixteen I had nearly all of it."

What a thing to burden a teenager with! But Jiang Yang doesn't look burdened, not in this life. Not any more.

"I did a school project on the subway body dumping case," Jiang Yang tells him. "I said it was because he had the same name as me, but ..." He shakes his head. "I wanted to know how it all turned out. We won, didn't we? In the end, we won."

"You did," Tongqie says. Singular _you_ : it was all Jiang Yang's doing, in the end. "You didn't stop - even beyond death, you didn't stop. Your persistence carried on, carried forward, and everything came to light." He smiles. "I watched. From everyone's point of view. I had to."

Jiang Yang swallows. "I thought you might have forgotten me. You see so many people - all the people in the world."

"None of them are you," Tongqie says, and points to a portrait on the wall - drawn from the picture he captured of Jiang Yang long ago.

Jiang Yang stares. Comes down the steps of the marble pedestal, looks up at the cluttered tables and desks. Stares at the portrait again. "Shouldn't all this be a lot more ... white? And empty? Not that I don't like the décor." He eyes Tongqie up and down. "Or the outfit. Very retro."

"It was too empty after you left," Tongqie says, too honest.

"Ah." Jiang Yang swallows. He smiles. Comes closer. "I missed you too. All my life."

Why is it that he can remember what ordinary people can't? Because of all the time spent in the Time Engraver's realm? Because his life has been touched by Tongqie's? Is that why he even has the same name?

It doesn't matter. What matters is that he's here. Tongqie closes the last of the distance between them and pulls him into a hug.

His body is warm and solid against Tongqie's, healthy and unbowed. His arms are strong, clinging as tightly as Tongqie's. It's a long time before either of them lets go.

* * *

Jiang Yang sits on a stool, watches Tongqie engrave age into a woman's skin. He's fidgeting.

Tongqie knows not to push him, gives him time to find his words. But words aren't coming - not even when Tongqie finishes his work and dismisses the woman back to her life.

Jiang Yang comes to stand behind him, though, wraps his arms around Tongqie, hooks his chin over Tongqie's shoulder, his chest pressed against the Tongqie's back. Only then does he speak. "Is this okay?"

"What? Of course. Why wouldn't it be?" But he remembers when he wouldn't have allowed such touch, wouldn't have wanted it. Now ... He ducks his head. "I want -" 

He breaks off. He can't let himself complete the sentence, can't risk saying too much. He's already too greedy, taking so much of Jiang Yang, when he is not meant to be involved with humans at all.

( _Aren't you?_ says a voice in his head. _Too late for that, isn't it?_ It sounds like Madam Weaver.)

Jiang Yang loosens his arms. "Turn around," he says, softly. Tongqie does.

Despite his self-assured movements, Jiang Yang's face is open, vulnerable. Still so brave. Tongqie's chest feels too tight. He holds still as Jiang Yang lifts a hand to cup Tongqie's cheek.

"Tongqie?" he says, quietly.

"Jiang Yang," breaks from Tongqie's lips, and he reaches out, takes Jiang Yang's face between his own palms, pulls him yet closer until their mouths meet.

It's a clumsy kiss: Tongqie has never done such a thing before, never contemplated it. Hasn't let himself think about it, even with Jiang Yang, until very recently. But it still feels so right.

And when they break apart, Jiang Yang is grinning again. Tongqie finds himself mirroring him, without even meaning to.

* * *

"I see you so rarely," Jiang Yang complains, in the Time Engraver's workshop once more.

"You should be glad," Tongqie tells him. "What would bring you here sooner is nothing I'd wish on you again."

Jiang Yang's mouth works, hesitant, as if seeking the shape of words he's not sure he should speak. Finally, he manages a twitchy smile. "I know," he says quietly, and leans forward to press his forehead against Tongqie's shoulder. "I'm lucky. I won't be ungrateful - I'll be glad for what I have." He huffs a shuddering breath that Tongqie can feel through his shirt. "I won't be greedy."

And that echoes Tongqie's own thoughts so closely, it clenches his heart.

"You should be," Tongqie tells him. "You should ask for more. Even if I can't give it to you, you should ask. You should never simply settle for less."

Jiang Yang sits up, meets his eyes straight-on. "I miss you," he says. "When I'm not here, I miss you."

* * *

Jiang Yang won't earn new lines on his face so soon. Jiang Yang is right: they don't meet often enough. And so, not so many days later, Tongqie walks once more through the frozen time of the world outside his tower. He knows where he is going, has seen the scene from the point of view of another man.

There they are, walking along the path in the dappled shade of the trees, talking animatedly: Jiang Yang, Zhu Wei, Chen Mingzhang.

Tongqie gathers his courage. He steps forward, for the first time - into the flow of time and into Jiang Yang's path.

Jiang Yang's eyes widen. "Tongqie! How ...?"

It's the first time he's met Jiang Yang outside the tower. The first time he's met anyone here.

Explanations will have to wait until they're alone, but the truth need not. "I wanted to see you, and I knew you weren't coming yet." 

Jiang Yang beams at him, his eyes soft.

"Xiao-Jiang?" Zhu Wei asks, looking between them. 

"Lao-Zhu," says Jiang Yang, "I told you I met someone. This is him."

"Isn't he too pretty for you?" Zhu Wei grumps. But his eyes are evaluating Tongqie, protective of his friend. Good.

"Zhan Tongqie," the Time Engraver introduces himself, with a surname, like a human. He's not, but in some things, he's found, the difference is not so great.

He can - will - pull Jiang Yang into his workshop when it's time, but when it's not, he can still be a part of his life. There's nothing that says he can't. The Weaver has woven their fates together, after all.

* * *

"Hold still," Tongqie scolds.

He no longer leaves Jiang Yang in stasis while he works on him, unwilling to miss a moment. Jiang Yang makes a face at him, but then obeys. 

Tongqie carves another laugh line into his beloved face. It has been twenty years, and every slight wrinkle is a triumph. Every sign of age is the sign of a life he didn't get to have, before. 

In this life, Jiang Yang is already older than he ever was in his last. In this life, he'll get to actually grow old.

And Tongqie will get to experience it all with him, by his side every day, every year, every decade.

Until the end, and then beyond.

There is no human life that won't appear before the Engraver, sooner or later, and so Jiang Yang will, too, in every life to come. 

And those whose fates are woven together will find each other again, after all.


End file.
